Abu Hena :
It happened in 2004 when John Forbes Kerry, a Vietnam War veteran fought the presidential election as a Democratic Party nominee and was about to win the White House. The early exit polls suggested that John Kerry had won the election – but the final result did not emerge until 3am although the networks usually declare the winner soon after the polls are closed. Finally at the end of an inconvenient drama, John Kerry conceded to George W. Bush. He joined the U.S. State Department as President Obama’s top diplomat in 2013.It was the time when the World of great power rivalry started resurfacing with a vengeance since the fleeting post-Soviet interlude of the 1990s. It is a new old-world of clashing interests and alliances between great powers.
The American foreign policy itself had assumed an oddly 19th Century characteristic during George W. Bush. Embroiled in foreign wars thousands of miles from home, Bush fought ‘crusades’ against Muslim zealots from Mesopotamia to Afghanistan. This was hardly the agenda President Obama would have chosen for himself. In his first term he looked like a conciliator who would co-ordinate a rescue of the World economy, tackle climate change, reform global institutions, and revive America’s international reputation. His election, according to critics and admirers alike, ushered in a new era in American foreign policy. But, although he carried out complete withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq and Afghanistan as promised, his presidency did not usher in a new era in American warfare. Under Obama, America continued fighting almost in the same way that it did under his predecessor – for similar reasons, with similar justifications. It proves the fact that when it comes to war, Presidents do what they think they must. This simple truth cannot be avoided.
Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State during the first term of Obama Administration, presided over the pull out from Iraq and Afghanistan and steered the course of the ‘Arab Spring’ in which Egyptians, Libyans and Tunisians forced their own autocratic leaders from power. But the aftermath of the changes have failed to bring desired results. The Egyptian government has changed hands installing a military dictator again. Experiment in Libya has yielded chaos.
The civil war devastated Libya’s already weak institutions , and a patchwork of militias began battling over the spoils. Iraq is far from stable. The government is dominated by Shias who neither have a place for the formerly dominant Sunnis nor resolved the explosive dispute with the Kurds over the control of Kirkuk. As a result civil war broke out resulting in the creation of the Islamic State. Many may think that too fast a U.S.exit might have acted as a catalyst for the conflagration in the region but Obama had no choice. America’s military machine as well as its money machine was on the rack. The move for a regime change in Syria has failed. Syria’s Bashar al -Assad has hit back with Russian help and the situation in Syria presents a human tragedy. Russian bombers conducted air strikes against targets in Syria from an airbase in Iran. Meanwhile Amnesty International reported that 18,000 people have died in Syria’s prisons at the hands of the regime. During the four years of civil war 400,000 lives have been lost, 6.6 million people have been displaced internally and 2 million children are out of school. The bloodstained picture of a boy, Omran who was recently pulled out of the ravaged building, shelled by Russian bombers, has captured the horrors of the Syrian civil war.
Two years after the annexation of Crimea Russian President Putin has deployed additional military forces and weapons to East Ukraine signalling a wider armed confrontation. Ukraine’s President has condemned Russian shelling saying, “Putin wants whole Ukraine.”
Russia has also begun a cyber-war at the invitation of Donald Trump to manipulate the 8 November U.S. Presidential Election. Now, China has announced closer military cooperation with Syrian Government. China has reportedly promised a $25 billion investment in Myanmar, during Aung San Suu Kyi’s visit. Obama has stopped the Iranians acquiring a nuclear bomb by a “grand design” but Iran’s intentions are hard to decipher. Nobody knows how much influence it would demand in the Gulf region and beyond in return.
” You may not be interested in war,” Trotsky once said, “but war is interested in you.” And so, although America had elected an antiwar President, it simply turned out not to be true. Rather, the “universal nation” elected a President in the tradition of American wartime leaders: a man ultimately willing to sacrifice idealism for pragmatism in pursuit of his primary duty of keeping America safe.
The crescent of instability from the Levant to Pakistan has consumed the White House and the State Department for a long period, and will certainly dominate the thinking of the new ones, who will assume the responsibility after 8 November election. At present Russia poses the greatest danger and with few more months to go John Kerry may still be scratching his head over how to read Russia’s swaggering attitude under Putin. Russia’s advance in Ukraine and airstrikes in Syria from Iranian airbase are enough evidence that Russia’s grudging acquiescence can no longer be taken for granted. Russia wants to be accepted again as a great power and will resist a farther enlargement of NATO. With its nuclear arsenal, its threat to remobilize conventional forces, its control over gas supplies to Europe, its arms sales, and its power over the Security Council, Russia has plenty of ways to create problem for the United States and Europe.
With the Russian resurgence looming large in the horizon, fanciful ‘terrorism’ fears have led U.S.’s NATO allies to crackdown on garments worn traditionally by some Muslim women since the 7th century. In France where full-face veils like the ‘burqa’ are already banned, three seafront towns recently prohibited full-body swimsuits, or ‘burkinis’. Other countries are similarly busy pursuing their own bans. Before leaving office in January, Secretary Kerry may do a great service to the world by cautioning his Western allies about the ‘distraction’ and ask them to be pragmatic and realize the gravity of the impending danger.
This time Russia has made its intentions clear: it is not interested in fighting a ‘cold war’, which Donald Trump rightly thinks, has ended. This time Russia will fight open wars in all fronts including the cyber-war to destabilize America .The Autocratic rulers everywhere have been exploiting ‘Islam phobia’ to suppress the opposition with impunity and thereby achieve their dirty political ends. It is now an accepted fact that the incidents like the Nine Eleven attacks in the United States and the massacre in Nice in France were possible because of gross failure of security, but neither the French nor the U.S. administration accepted the responsibility.
Most of the killings in the recent past, in Europe and America, have been carried out by people suffering from mental illnesses. In most cases the prosecutors failed to find any connection of the perpetrators with any international terrorist outfit. In the Eastern countries, ‘terrorism’ has been used as a mask and a shield by the rogue dictatorial regimes to destroy all opposition and perpetuate their heinous autocratic rule by foul play. Reacting to the recent killing of the priest in France, Pope Francis said that a war is going on in the world but that war is not a religious war. It is a war of interest. Yet the Republican nominee in the United States, who has no regard for any religion, puts all blame squarely on the Muslims for all the world’s conflicts and ills and expresses his highest admiration and reverence for his great hero, the Russian President Vladimir Putin.
[Writer was elected MP in the 7th and the 8th parliaments of Bangladesh.]
